The Bible and Evolution

 

By Pastor Doug Batchelor
Contributions by Emily Simmons

An Amazing Fact: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
Imagine, if you will, downtown New York City during rush hour. Subways roaring; elevators whizzing up and down skyscrapers; cabs … well … idling in traffic; people humming in and out of buildings, over bridges, across streets. From 10 stories below street level to 180 stories above, it’s a dynamo of activity and a complex network of electrical and telecommunications systems.

But according to even most evolutionary scientists, one single human cell of life is staggeringly more complex than New York City rush hour. “Each of those 100 trillion cells functions like a walled city. Power plants generate the cell’s energy. Factories produce proteins, vital units of chemical commerce. Complex transportation systems guide specific chemicals from point to point within the cell. … Sentries … monitor the outside world for signs of danger. Disciplined biological armies stand ready to grapple with invaders. A centralized genetic government maintains order” (Peter Gwynne, “The Secrets of the Human Cell,” Newsweek, August 20, 1979, p. 48).

Despite this confession, much of the modern world teaches that if you believe in creation, that God simply spoke things into existence … well, your intelligence is pitiful.

However, you’re also in good company. Jesus said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me” (John 5:46 NKJV). Christ took Moses’ writings as plain truth; He authoritatively and liberally quoted from the Old Testament regarding Creation, the Exodus, and the Flood. He never suggested that any part of Genesis was a parable or fable. In fact, Jesus referred to Adam and Eve as real people. (See Mark 10:6–9.) No matter what the world thinks of us, we should believe like Jesus.

This subject is very close to my heart. I grew up believing in evolution. Most of the 14 different schools I attended taught that we are here because of evolutionary processes that took millions and billions of years. Surprisingly, some of these were even religious schools!

William James, the father of modern psychology, said, “There’s nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.” Thus, the ridiculous view that, given enough time, chaos will produce order has taken a firm hold on our culture. And now, more and more Christians are being swept up by it, suggesting that God created all the sophisticated design around us using evolutionary processes. But this compromise creates an enormous problem: It makes it logically impossible to believe the rest of God’s Word as it is written.

However, even with my simple faith in God’s Word set aside, both reason and science soundly refute evolution. Indeed, mounting scientific evidence indicates that intelligent creation is truth.
The Whole World Can Be Wrong
As a child, I wanted to be a paleontologist. I could name all the dinosaurs and many different layers of the geologic column. Evolution fascinated me, and I thought people who believed in creation were fools. The evidence was as plain as day, right? It was in National Geographic and all those beautifully filmed nature programs on television. All these scientists couldn’t be wrong … could they?
Then I gradually discovered they were, in fact, very wrong.
But it wasn’t the Bible that convinced me. When I became a Christian, I didn’t check my brain at the church’s door. I’m still inquisitive about our world and our universe; I still love science. So at first I tried to marry the Bible and evolution. But science and reason kept getting in the way.
How can so many people be wrong? It’s human nature to follow the crowd, even when the crowd is clearly in error. The Bible says, “You shall not follow a crowd to do evil” (Exodus 23:2 NKJV). That covers our actions, yes, but it also covers our philosophies. It doesn’t matter if the whole world believes in the theory of evolution; the Bible is our standard of truth. Besides, evolution is totally incompatible with biblical Christianity.
Darwinism: The Evolution of Atheism
If you think creation is a fairy tale, you won’t find much else in the book of Genesis relevant either. You must eventually accept creation as a fact for any of the other great biblical truths — including God’s standards of morality — to be significant in your life.
Indeed, Darwin’s theory of evolution was a daring attempt to make God’s existence unnecessary; evolution really is the origins myth of atheism. It was developed for the purpose of giving humans the freedom to act without accountability to a higher power.
At its very core, atheism balks at the existence of an objective right and wrong. Obviously, not all atheists are ready to commit the evil their beliefs would allow for. However, to the atheistic evolutionist, humans have simply evolved into a society that currently frowns on theft and murder. But we could just as easily evolve into something else, and the result could not objectively be called good or bad. Blood could run in the streets and evolutionists could simply label it as “eliminating the weaker members of the species.”
Is it so surprising then that the horrors of the Holocaust find their underpinnings in the theory of evolution? An examination of the writings of Hitler and other Nazis reveals that Darwinism heavily influenced the policies of WWII Germany. In fact, many people are surprised to learn that the entire title of Darwin’s Origin of Species is: “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life” (emphasis added). Hitler labeled Jews as an inferior race and less than human, thereby justifying murder, torture, and ghastly human experiments in the name of survival of the fittest. And racism continues today because many people believe that some humans are more highly evolved than others. But racism directly contradicts the Bible, which says God “has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26 NKJV).
A Bad Foundation
Teaching our children the lesson that there is no absolute right and wrong is very dangerous. It has caused a disaster in our public schools, our court system, and for the very fabric of our society.
A false understanding of human origins ultimately degrades society. Consider the nations that have made atheism the core of their culture — the former Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and Vietnam. I’ve been to Russia and China and have seen the devastating effects of atheism: Suicide, alcoholism, and spousal abuse are epidemics. Atheism offers no hope or purpose for life.
But exhibit “A” would be the drastic differences between North and South Korea. If you stand on the 38th parallel, you’ll see a very bleak and backward existence of the imprisoned people of the North. Look south toward Seoul and you will see a bright and free civilized existence. The core difference? South Korea is a Christian stronghold; North Korea teaches evolution and atheism.
Satan told Adam and Eve that if they rejected God’s Word, they would be freed and experience unlimited human advancement. Instead, they were enslaved by sin. Today, Cuba, North Korea, and China aggressively persecute Christianity, all the while suppressing freedom, advancement, and hope — enslaving their people in unspeakable evil.
Evolutionists can also rationalize all kinds of immoral behaviors as merely part of the evolution of man; nothing is inherently bad. As a teenager, I learned that my science teacher had an affair with a woman in the loft of his home while his pregnant wife was downstairs. Though it deeply hurt his wife, he appeared indifferent to her feelings. He excused himself by saying, “Not all of the primates we’ve evolved from are monogamous, so adultery is perfectly natural. We can’t help it.” Evolution clearly undermines Christian living.
False Assumptions, Faulty Conclusions
But what about all the supposed scientific evidence that proves evolution? The truth is that the theory of evolution is based on huge assumptions about things that happened in the unobservable past. (Remember that the scientific method requires observation and repeatable research. So calling evolution “science” doesn’t make any sense.
For instance, the theory stands on dubious dating methods. One is carbon dating, a method used to date dead plants and animals. All living plants and animals contain the same ratio of two types of carbon, 14C and 12C, which they get from the atmosphere and from space. When an organism dies, 14C begins disintegrating while 12C levels remain constant. Thus, measuring the 14C/12C ratio in a dead plant makes it possible to estimate how long ago the plant died.
But to precisely determine the plant’s age, at least two questions must be answered: How fast does 14C decay? And how much 14C did the organism contain when it died? In answer to the first question, 14C has a half-life of 5,700 years. (A “half-life” is the amount of time required for half of the atoms — in this case, carbon atoms — in a given sample to decay.)
To answer the second question, scientists made an assumption that the atmosphere’s 14C/12C ratio has remained constant throughout earth’s history. If so, they argue accurate dating is possible up to about 80,000 years — after that the amount of 14C left in a specimen is so small it is undetectable. But if this assumption is wrong, any dates calculated by this method are untrustworthy.
In science experiments, assumptions are critical. But if the starting assumption is false, the ensuing experiment will lead a scientist to draw a flawed conclusion, even if his calculations appear correct. Willard Libby, the developer of carbon dating, drew his conclusions based on the assumption that the earth was millions of years old. He calculated that it would take about 30,000 years for an atmosphere’s 14C/12C ratio to reach equilibrium. When he discovered that earth’s ratio was not in equilibrium, meaning it must be younger than 30,000 years, he dismissed it as an experimental error!
Suppose you enter a room with one door and no windows. In the middle of the room, a burning candle sits on a table. With nothing else to do, you try to figure out how long the candle has been burning. You start by observing how fast the candle is currently burning; how many inches per hour, for example. Does that tell you how long it’s been burning? No, because you don’t know how tall it was when it started burning. Suppose a note on the table stipulates that the candle was three feet tall when it was first lit; now you can calculate how long it’s been burning based on how tall it was to begin with and how fast it’s burning now.
But wait. When you entered the room, the open door let in more oxygen, so now the candle would be burning at a faster rate than before. Even if you know the present oxygen level of the room, you wouldn’t know what it was before you opened the door. Without an observer taking careful notes during the entire process, you can only guess as there are simply too many unknowns to make an accurate calculation.
It’s the same with carbon dating: There are simply too many variables. Scientists don’t know how old the earth is because they don’t know and can’t observe what has happened in the past. Or how the environmental factors have changed. Amazingly, an entire religion has been established on these dubious assumptions. It seems strange then that evolutionists ridicule the faith of Christians. Believing in evolution requires far more faith than believing in creationism.
Evidence for Creation
Increasingly, genuine science suggests a young earth, which supports the biblical creation story. Bear in mind that even the most advanced techniques cannot detect 14C in specimens older than 80,000 years. In 1997, the Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth group (RATE) began an eight-year project researching data typically ignored or censored by evolutionists. One of their discoveries was significant levels of 14C found in various samples of both coal and diamonds collected worldwide. The finding indicates that the coal and diamonds could not be billions of years old, as evolutionists claim.
Scientists also now know that the 14C/12C ratio has not been the same throughout earth’s history. (For one thing, the amount of 14C in the atmosphere increased sharply around the time of the Industrial Revolution.) Physicists Suess and Lingenfelter have now shown that 14C is entering the atmosphere about 30 percent faster than it is leaving. When it comes to carbon dating, this means that a thousand-year-old specimen appears much older than it really is when dated by a method that assumes atmospheric equilibrium. In fact, the older a specimen, the greater the error!
Even when correcting for the known increase of 14C during the Industrial Revolution, specimens still appear older than they really are. Moreover, the layer of water described in Genesis as surrounding the pre-Flood earth could have shielded the atmosphere from much of the 14C entering from space. Thus, pre-Flood specimens would contain so little 14C that they would appear to have been decaying for tens of thousands of years.
Where Are the People?
Consider the world’s population, now approaching seven billion. Around 1960, there were only three billion people; in 1804, one billion. In Christ’s day, only about 200 million people lived on the earth. Calculate this same growth rate back about another 2,500 years — to the time of the Flood — and you get just eight people: Noah, his wife, and his sons and their wives.
But now use this same growth rate, an observable scientific fact, to project the world’s population if man had begun multiplying, say, just 10,000 years ago. (Never mind the millions of years that evolutionists postulate!) We should be standing shoulder to shoulder, 100 deep, over every square foot of the planet! Where have all the people gone? Moreover, there aren’t enough human remains, graves, or even artifacts to account for that many people having lived and died on the earth.
Ida: Follow the Money
Found in two pieces in Germany in 1983 by amateur fossil hunters, Ida, supposedly 47 million years old, was passed around the fossil-collecting community until she ended up in the hands of a research team. Earlier this year, the media eagerly dubbed Ida “the newest missing link” in response to a press release bent on promoting the find rather than the science.
Indeed, Ida has come under immense scrutiny by evolutionists as just another sham meant to drive DVD and book sales. Examine her photograph and you’ll see a skeleton that looks identical to a modern lemur, not an ape. Moreover, her remarkably intact skin, fur, and stomach contents suggest rapid burial (consistent with a flood) and an age of thousands of years (consistent with a young earth) rather than millions. Remember also that not a single so-called missing link ever submitted as proof of human ancestry has ever been uncontested in the science community. Some have been utter frauds. That’s important to consider the next time our evolution-fawning media prints another fossil fable as truth.
The Un-Fossil Record
In 1990, Dr. Mary Schweitzer and her colleagues discovered some T. rex bones to be partially un-fossilized. Adding to the excitement, when examining the bone specimens under the microscope, Schweitzer’s team identified little reddish-brown, translucent, round objects: red blood cells!
Further investigation revealed the presence of hemoglobin in the bone specimens. These findings can only mean that dinosaurs are much younger than previously claimed. Since then, Schweitzer continues to find soft, fibrous tissue and blood vessels in other dinosaur bones. Why have these never been found before? Probably because, blinded by their assumptions of an old earth, scientists have never looked for them before. And, true to form, Schweitzer automatically questioned the clear evidence rather than re-examining her assumptions! But when a creationist scientist does that, it’s labeled unscientific.
Censored!
I used to believe in the Big Bang theory. I still do in a sense — I believe that God spoke, and bang!, it happened. Controversy over the Big Bang rages even among scientists who believe it; there are many problems with the theory that simply can’t be explained. For one thing, no scientific experiment has ever demonstrated that an explosion can produce order and interworking systems.
Yet blatant persecution of scientists who merely question it (or other “established scientific facts”) is widely practiced. Once highly esteemed scientists, such as astronomers Geoffrey and Margaret Burbridge, who dared to suggest different explanations, find themselves censored, ostracized, even without a career. Physics professor Dr. Stefan Marinov actually committed suicide because of the intolerance he experienced in response to his “non-mainstream” work.
When a scientist’s conclusions contradict the Bible, it doesn’t mean we should reinterpret the Bible. Thousands of true scientists believe in creation, but they are consistently silenced by the atheists who have a vice grip on science journals, academic privileges, and a fawning media who put the beliefs of faulty men above the Word of God.
Evolution: At Odds With God’s Word

• The Bible teaches that creation was instigated by the supernatural word of God. There was no death, no suffering, no pain. Everything was “very good.” Evolution teaches that creation was instigated by a “supernatural” big bang. There was death and decay from the very beginning.
   
• The Bible teaches that a global cataclysmic flood formed the geologic layers and that mankind has been devolving since his creation. Evolution teaches that slow wind and water erosion formed the geologic layers over millions of years. Man has been evolving since the beginning.
   
• The Bible teaches only Jesus Christ can save the human race and restore us to paradise — and only through grace by faith. Evolution teaches, as the devil said 6,000 years ago, that the human race can save itself, and we will one day become like gods if we try hard enough.

In the Beginning
Honest science and logic show that our incredibly marvelous and complex world could never have evolved by accident. It happened as Jesus says it did, and it’s crucial that we believe it.
Sadly, many churches and Christian universities are compromising on this issue. “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17). If your pastor or professor suggests God used evolutionary processes to produce the earth, ask them if this means the saved will have to wait a few billion years while God creates the new heavens and the new earth. Then ask if our new resurrected bodies will have to evolve from a single cell again.
“Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Psalm 51:10). Which is harder: to speak a galaxy into existence or to change a human heart? Salvation relies upon God’s miraculous, instant creative power. When you toss aside the six-day Creation account, you do more than clear a pathway to immorality — you remove the hope of salvation!
Ultimately, something very simple but very important lies at the heart of someone who rejects biblical creation. If “in the beginning, God created” is true, then God is the supreme authority and, as His creation, we are subject to Him. Fallen human nature doesn’t like that arrangement.
Do you believe that God created the heavens and the earth in six literal days? If so, praise the Lord! Then you can also believe that He will give you a new heart through a similar miracle of creation. (See Ezekiel 36:26; 2 Corinthians 5:17.) Could we have a better hope than that?

The Dangers of a Diluted Gospel

October 18, 2010
By Pastor Doug BatchelorAn Amazing Fact: In 2005, cancer patient Georgia Hayes won a $2.2 billion court settlement against her pharmacist, who had diluted her chemotherapy drugs with water. In the process, she had lost her best chance for recovery. While $2.2 billion is a lot of money, it’s little comfort when you don’t have long to live. Dilute: to make thinner, to lessen strength, to adulterate, to reduce value or efficiency, to make fainter, or to water down What could be more deadly than diluted cancer medication? Maybe placebo pills for a cardiac patient. Or diluted insulin for a diabetic. Actually, the most deadly medicine is a watered-down gospel—because the tragic results are eternal. Jesus says there will be two groups of people in the end times. One group He calls few, the other He calls many. “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name? … and done many wonders?’ ... And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ ” (Matthew 7:22, 23). Evidently, the majority of Christ’s professed followers are self-deceived. They know His name. Their religious activities seem to have the marks of genuine ministry, but Jesus, with a broken heart, will declare to them, “I don’t know you.” Why? Because they live a compromised life full of sin. This is a popular characteristic of people in the last days. They are “lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, … haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:2–4). Of course, when Paul describes the last-day conditions above, he’s describing what has always been typical in the world. But here he’s saying that it will infiltrate the church. All these lawless behaviors so prevalent in the world are going to be common in the church. Christians will have all the “form of godliness” but lack the power (2 Timothy 3:5). They have a medicine bottle and a label, but they’re taking diluted drugs that can never heal them. Sin Isn’t Just a Case of the Sniffles Perhaps you know somebody with hay fever. Maybe even you. There are some over-the-counter pills you can take to fight the symptoms. Sometimes, depending on the pollen, you can take half a pill and be okay. Sometimes, though, you have to take the entire pill. If you don’t take the right dose, you might leave the house thinking all’s well, but then later it hits you: Your eyes start itching and your nose starts running. You’re miserable. You just can’t wait until winter arrives. Getting the right medicine in the right dose makes a world of difference. So it is with the gospel. If we don’t get the full strength, we could be deceived into thinking we’re really healed when we’re actually getting worse. Likewise, the devil is mass-distributing a watered-down version among God’s people. He’s content to let you go to some churches because the medicine there is often so diluted it won’t make any transforming difference in your life. “The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables” (2 Timothy 4:3, 4). In this verse, Paul describes a problem in the pulpit and in the pew. You have preachers who are not sharing a straight message, and you have people who don’t want a straight message. The people don’t want to take anything that’s hard to swallow. They generally want what’s easy and sweet to the senses. They want someone who will give them a prescription for candy-flavored, chewable medicine. “Savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also, from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves” (Acts 20:29). The gospel gets watered down because preachers want to be popular and some, for pride or money, want to draw away disciples after themselves for power and influence. (See Ezekiel 13:10.) Untempered Mortar Instead of warning the lost to turn from their sins, false teachers tell people to be at peace in their sins because God is too full of grace to expect them to change. They give diluted medicine, which gives people a false sense of security. The Scriptures refer to false teachers as those who build a wall and “plaster it with untempered mortar” (Ezekiel 13:15). In Bible times, lazy builders would stack bricks with no mortar and then put a plaster veneer over the bricks to hide it. Without the mortar, there’s no stability. (Today we use concrete to hold the bricks together.) The wall might have looked solid from the outside, but a donkey could have kicked it over because it had no real strength. More than 500,000 were killed or injured in the 2010 Haitian earthquake. One of the principal causes of these casualties was untempered mortar. Greedy contractors skimped on the percentage of concrete they mixed into the mortar and expensive iron rebar, which reinforces the concrete. It made for pathetically weak walls, and as soon as the massive earthquake struck, the fragile buildings crumbled. There are walls for Christians too. The Ten Commandments are a wall, built to protect your freedom and happiness. When someone gets an STD because of promiscuous living, he reads the seventh commandment and understands that wall was put there to protect his happiness, not to prevent happiness. The wall of obedience protects our lives, freedom, and contentment. But if the mortar gets diluted, whether from the pulpit or the pew, then, when the storm comes, like a house built on sand the wall implodes. Diluting the Prosperity Naturally, I always want a big crowd in church. That’s understandable, right? But this desire carries risk. In order to draw people to church, I’ll always be tempted to make my sermons as attractive as possible. Marketers try to convince you that if you use their product, you will live longer, look better, have more money, and be more popular. Does the Bible tell us that’s how we’re to market Christianity? Does Jesus promise health and wealth and popularity? Is “prosperity preaching” right? There’s a lot of good in the good news. There are many blessings, but Jesus also says, “Take up [your] cross, and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). Deny yourself daily—we don’t hear that very often. Jesus said the real key to happiness is to put God and others first. Today, however, it’s all about putting “me” first. A lot of people hear this diluted version of the gospel and believe it’s good medicine. But good medicine is really just the beginning. Jesus said we are to be doers of the Word. A Christian isn’t defined by church attendance. A Christian is defined by a transformed heart that influences his actions. Jesus asked, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46). We can’t call ourselves Christians if we don’t do what He says. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Part of the gospel we’re not hearing today is that He wants us to be a people who obey Him. Giving the industrial-strength prescription of gospel truth will heal the symptoms of sin. We are not saved by obedience, of course. That is legalism. But obedience is not legalism if it’s a response to God’s love, a response to having already been saved. “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15). One way the gospel gets diluted is when people are encouraged to have enough faith to believe that God will forgive them, but not enough to believe that He will keep them from sin. It’s a gospel that says God accepts you as you are and doesn’t care if you change. The Bible says the gospel is not just about justification, but also about sanctification. You can come to Jesus just as you are. That’s good news. But He loves you too much to leave you that way. That’s good news too! You can be changed to be like Jesus. He can transform you so you become a new creature. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). That’s great news! Show, Don’t Tell “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, [from falling,] And to present you faultless Before ... His glory with exceeding joy” (Jude 1:24). I want to have a life where I don’t stumble all the time. How about you? But Christians hear so little of that, and the results are obvious. People have to explain they’re believers because they don’t consistently live it. Instead, we ought to be lights on a hill so people say, “Wow. Her life is distinctly different.” “He’s not just like everybody else.” “What’s different about you?” And we answer, “I believe in Jesus. He saved me. He changed my life.” Prior to the Dark Ages, the church thrived even though the Christian religion was forbidden. They were being thrown into lion dens and being burned at the stake. They couldn’t practice it in the open, so they dug catacombs under Rome for the first 200 years of Christian history. You can still visit these Roman mines. Some Christians etched on the walls, “Vita, vita, vita,” which means, “Life, life, life. I have life.” They were suffering and dying in these dark mines—and yet they were joyful. Then something happened in Rome. Constantine wanted to build his empire because of the civil war between him and Maximus. He claimed to have had a vision and was now supposed to fight under the sign of the cross. They didn’t know anything about Christianity, but his soldiers painted Christian symbols on their shields. They were all pagans, but they marched into the Tiber River for battle and called it a baptism, figuring they were Christians when they came out the other side. It became the in-thing to be a Christian, but they hadn’t been taught the whole truth. When the emperor made Christianity acceptable, pagans came pouring into the church. The leaders didn’t handle it well. They didn’t want to lose the new converts, so they began to dilute the message, just a little. The pagans would have to make a lot of lifestyle changes, and if they didn’t like it, they might go back to persecuting Christians. One such problem was idols. One historian wrote, “There were more idols in Rome than Romans.” These new Christians wanted to do what was right and asked the priests what they should do with their statues. Some of the priests said, “Throw them out!” But many of the pagans balked. So some of the other pastors suggested, “Ease them into it. Tell them to give Christian names to their idols and we’ll take care of it later.” So they named their idols Peter, James, John, and Mary. Many pagan practices crept into the church so that in one generation Christianity became the commingling of paganism and Scripture. They diluted the gospel for the sake of having quantity instead of quality—and it ushered in the 1,260-year Dark Ages. How to Grow the Church It’s a constant temptation churches face when measuring success. They ask, “Is it growing?” Very rarely do we measure the success of a church by how godly the people are. Instead, we measure success by numbers, and that can be a mistake. We’re tempted to make it easier to be a member. It becomes a mindset to just get them in the door and worry about the rest later. So we dilute the message little by little to make the medicine easier to swallow. Even today, I hear pastors saying, “Don’t insist they quit smoking or drinking before they join the church. Make it easy for them to come to Christ and baptize them. The Lord will deal with these things in His own time.” Then they come in and years later they’re still chained to these destructive habits. Baptism represents a new beginning, a liberation, a changed life. It doesn’t mean you’re instantly perfect. It does mean addictions to sin should be repudiated and left behind. One of my favorite Christian authors said it this way: “Men and women have many habits that are antagonistic to the principles of the Bible. The victims of strong drink and tobacco are corrupting body, soul and spirit. Such ones should not be received into the church until they give evidence that they are truly converted, that they feel the need of the faith that works by love and purifies the soul. The truth of God will purify the true believer. He who is thoroughly converted will abandon every defiling habit and appetite. By total abstinence he will overcome the desires for health-destroying indulgences” (Bible Training School, July 1, 1902). As we learned earlier, the Dark Ages were a result of bringing people into the church before they really understood, before they had surrendered their hearts. The church becomes diluted, enfeebled, weakened. The power of being a follower of Jesus loses its strength, and pretty soon we’re coming together, going through a ritual once a week, and living like the world. Instead of winning souls to Christ and living godly lives, we’re doing exactly what the devil wants in weakening the power and the efficacy of the gospel. “Gospel Lite” The mega evangelical churches have something they call “gospel lite.” They want visitors to be comfortable, so they make the worship experience as easy as possible. They offer coffee and donuts before and after service. They encourage relaxed dress, even just T-shirts and shorts. They have theater-like seating so you don’t have to squish together in a pew with strangers. If you offer enough enticing perks, you can get anybody to visit for an hour. Then once you get them in, you can’t preach the hard things or rebuke their pet sins because they might not come back. Feed them on clichés about the power of positive thinking. Entertain them with animated music, laser lights, and dramatic presentations. Then you think it must be the truth because after all you have 10,000 people coming to church. But how many have repented of their sins and really know Jesus? So how are you going to know that you’re not getting a diluted gospel from your pastor? You must study the Bible with guidance from the Holy Spirit. You need to search it out for yourself. There are a lot of preachers out there who are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They measure success by numbers, so they preach a diluted gospel. Pastor John MacArthur says, “Watered down, diluted theology will fail to produce deep reverence, deep worship, deep repentance, deep humility, deep understanding of God’s nature, His work, His ministry, His laws, His standards, His principles. It fails to make people of God, people that are God-centered.” He’s right. An undiluted gospel is going to involve real repentance for sin, a sorrow for sin, and a turning away from it. Repentance means “remorse, regret, contrition for past sin. To change for the better as a result of remorse or contrition for one’s sins.” The first thing John the Baptist said when he started preaching about the kingdom of God was, “Repent.” The first thing Jesus said was, “Repent,” and if He tells us to repent, it means we can and we should. Jesus said, “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Matthew 9:13). The first church leaders said, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). First comes the baptism of repentance, then comes the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The full-strength gospel medicine precedes reception and filling of the Holy Spirit. Along with repentance must be restitution and reform. “If the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has stolen, and walks in the statutes of life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live; he shall not die” (Ezekiel 33:15). In 1858 revivalist Jeremiah Meneely brought his preaching to Belfast, Ireland. He talked about repentance, reform, and committing yourself to the Lord. The men there worked in a shipyard and were so convicted of their sins, they repented and began to return the tools they had pilfered during the previous years. The response was so complete the shipyard had to build extra sheds to take in all of the returned tools! Eventually, the management asked that there be no further returns of stolen property! You know the Holy Spirit is working in a community when people start living like real Christians and make tangible changes in their lives. This is the fruit of the real gospel. What Gospel Do You Desire? Is it your desire to be filled with the Spirit and to have an undiluted message in your life and in your church? Let us encourage one another to be real Bible Christians by studying for ourselves to know what constitutes having a relationship with the Lord and being saved. I have a friend who is still crippled today from a small plane crash. While flying with friends in a South American country, they trusted a stranger to fill up the tanks in their aircraft. It turns out that gas was badly contaminated with water. Unfortunately, they did not discover the polluted fuel until they were 600 feet off the ground. The engine coughed, lost power, and they crash landed in the jungle. Friend, do you know that you’re getting the pure, high-octane, unadulterated, industrial-strength fuel of God’s truth? Many will be deceived by bright lights and promises of wealth, but a few will study for themselves in the Word and be changed. Which one are you?

The Bible on Marriage, Divorce, & Remarriage

The Bible on Marriage, Divorce, & Remarriage
By Pastor Doug Batchelor

Happily Ever After…
In light of the recent royal marriage extravaganza between Prince William and commoner Kate Middleton, many still remember the wedding of the millennium: Diana Spencer to Prince Charles.
Widely billed as the fairytale story of a beautiful girl who marries a prince, the royal wedding was broadcast around the world to a television audience of 750 million, while 600,000 people lined the streets just to catch a glimpse of Diana en route to the ceremony.
Diana wore a pricey dress with a 25-foot train, and the guest list read like a “who’s who” of the world’s richest and most famous citizens.
It was a wonderful picture of hope and promise, but a lavish wedding does not a loving marriage make. As we all know, within a decade the “wedding of the millennium” unraveled into just another miserable marriage that ended in sordid stories of infidelity and divorce. What made it even sadder was Diana had herself come from a broken home. Her mother had divorced her father when Diana was very young. On the day Diana’s mother left the house, she said to her little girl, “I will be back very soon.”
“Very soon” turned out to be never, and that event deeply impacted Diana for the rest of her short life. In fact, after Diana first met Prince Charles—who apparently was actually going out with her sister at the time—she told her friends that she was going to marry him. Her friends wondered how she could possibly know that. Diana responded, “Because he’s the only man on the planet who is not allowed to divorce me.”
Sadly, no human promise, wisdom, or wealth can keep a marriage together; sin has infected our lives too much for that. But the Bible has the keys to make a marriage a happy and productive one—and avoid the scourge of divorce.

Most Sacred Institution
On January 3, 2004, pop star Britney Spears shocked her fans when she impulsively married her childhood friend Jason Alexander in Las Vegas.
Within 55 hours the marriage was annulled.
Spears said, “I do believe in the sanctity of marriage; I totally do.” But she confessed, “I was in Vegas, and it took over me, and, you know, things got out of hand.”
One obvious reason many people so recklessly jump into marriage is that they figure if it doesn’t work out they can just as quickly jump out. The solemn vows, they reason, are just a required formality.
However, the Bible is not silent regarding the sanctity of marriage. How could it be silent when marriage was created by God? We should expect that the Bible would come with some strict guidelines about what is permitted to cancel a marriage. The many civil and religious laws established to preserve marriage exist because of the high priority of the institution.
After all, how important would marriage be if it could be so easily dissolved? If you could be released from this solemn covenant for the most trivial of reasons, then marriage itself would be trivial—and, as we’ve noted already, this is exactly what’s happening in our culture because marriage is so easy to escape.
Salvation is also a sacred covenant. We might have cause to worry if God honored His covenant to save us the same way many people these days honor their marriage vows.
Fort Knox is one of the most heavily guarded locations in North America. Why? Because its vaults contain approximately 4,600 tons of gold bullion. However, grocery stores are not built like small fortresses—with thick walls, armed guards, and complicated safes—to protect bubblegum. The value of what is inside a location is often best revealed by the level of security protecting it.
It’s the same with marriage. God has placed a formidable wall, a holy hedge, around this institution in order to protect it precisely because it is so valuable, so sacred, so important. The marriage vow is not like children on a playground making fanciful pledges like, “Cross your heart and hope to die.” When a man and woman get married, they are committing themselves to each other in the strongest possible terms. It is a solemn oath made in the presence of God, meant to last as long as those two hearts keep beating in stereo. “For You have blessed it, O Lord, and it shall be blessed forever” (1 Chronicles 17:27 NKJV).

Conditional Commitment?
Joseph Campbell said, “A marriage is a commitment to that which you are. That person is literally your other half. And you and the other are one. … Marriage is a life commitment, and a life commitment means the prime concern of your life. If marriage is not the prime concern, you are not married.”
But what if you are thoroughly convinced that you married the wrong person? Does the vow still need to be kept … really? Psalm 15:1 says, “Lord, who may abide in Your tabernacle? Who may dwell in Your holy hill?” In other words, who will go to heaven? Part of the answer is found in verse 4: “He who swears to his own hurt and does not change” (NKJV). It’s talking about a person who has made a promise he doesn’t really want to keep anymore, but he keeps it anyway because it was a promise.
It’s someone like Jephthah, who promised to dedicate to the Lord whatever came out of his gates when he returned home victorious. (See Judges 11:30, 31.) He likely thought it would be a goat or a cow, but it turned out to be his daughter. Who could have blamed him for taking back that pledge? Yet with a broken heart, he kept his vow, and she was given to serve in the temple for the rest of her life without marrying.
When you stood at the altar and made your vow, did you not know that someday your husband or wife might have days when they act grumpy and look frumpy? Did you never consider that their outward beauty and rippling muscles would eventually sag? They might even snore or someday grow senile and need your constant care. There is no excuse for abandoning your sacred vow because it hurts you.
Remember, the kind of love spoken of in the Bible is an unconditional love. “The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: ‘Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you’ ” (Jeremiah 31:3 NKJV). This is the way Jesus loves us. It’s not because we are always lovable, but because He has chosen to love us despite our failures. It’s not a love driven because of what you do for Him. “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38, 39 NKJV).
It’s a choice to love regardless of whether or not a spouse is always lovable.
Inseparable love? That’s commitment.
Martin Luther said, “The Christian is supposed to love his neighbor, and since his wife is his nearest neighbor, she should be his deepest love.”

One Plus One Equals One
The deep-sea angler is a very interesting ocean fish.
The female is about as big as a volleyball. On the other hand, the male is disproportionately small, like a black jellybean with fins. He has small hook teeth that he uses to bite the female of his dreams and attach himself to her. Once attached, his blood vessels actually join with those of the female—and he will spend the rest of his life merged with her like an extra appendage, getting all of his nourishment from her body in return for fertilizing her eggs. The flesh of the two fish eventually fuses, and they remain permanently connected.
This might not be the most elegant word picture, but it adds new meaning to the Scripture, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
Consider the word “cleave” used in this verse; it comes from the Hebrew word dabaq, which means “adhere” or “glue.” In other words, husbands and wives should be super-glued together in their marriage.
There are several ways that a husband and wife become one flesh. The most obvious is when their chromosomes blend together through an act of love to form a new creature, a child made in their image. However, whether or not they have children, this oneness also applies to the spiritual, mental, and physical aspects of their lives and partnership.
According to researchers at the University of California in San Francisco, when a man and woman engage in sexual intimacy, the hormone oxytocin is released, which helps bond the relationship. Oxytocin has been shown to be “associated with the ability to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships and healthy psychological boundaries with other people.” When it is released during sex, it begins creating an emotional bond between individuals. Oxytocin is also associated with mother/infant bonding because it is released during childbirth and breastfeeding.
Let’s be clear though: When a man and woman get married, becoming “one flesh” is far beyond sexual or chemical. Emotions, dreams, responsibilities, and relationships are all melded together. We have all heard stories of how difficult and dangerous it can be to separate conjoined twins when arteries, nerves, and organs are shared. Likewise, separating what God has joined together seldom happens without great risk.
A man and woman in marriage become so closely united in purpose, being, and existence, it is as though they were literally “one flesh.” And two lives so intertwined cannot be divided without causing great pain, emotional bleeding, and scarring. That’s why divorce is always so devastating.

Tips for a Happy Marriage
No question: Marriage can be challenging. But as we have seen, it is intended to be a wonderful gift from God—a blessing, not a burden. “He who finds a wife finds a good thing, And obtains favor from the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22 NKJV).
The key, of course, is communication.
There is a story about an old man and his wife who were celebrating their golden wedding anniversary—50 years of married life. Having spent most of the day with relatives and friends at a big party given in their honor, they returned home. They decided, before retiring, to have a little tea with bread and jam. Seated in the kitchen, the husband opened up a new loaf of bread and handed the end piece (the heel) to his wife. After a long pause, she exploded, saying, “For 50 years you have been dumping the heel of the bread on me. I’ve held my peace, but enough is enough. I refuse to take it anymore, this lack of concern for me and what I like.” On and on she went scolding him. The husband was absolutely astonished at the tirade. When she had finished, another long pause drifted between them. Finally, with misty eyes, he softly said to her, “The heel is my favorite piece.”
I say again: Communicate!
Every marriage faces challenges, some big and some small. Life is precious and short; therefore, focus on the larger battles, working through them as a team while letting go of the incidentals that, in the big scheme of things, don’t really matter. If you are going to pick something apart, make sure it’s worth the effort. Unfortunately, unresolved arguments are a big issue in marriages, often leading to divorce. Therefore, unless the issue is something significant, learn to let some things roll off your back. When you do discuss the big stuff, wait until you’re alone. If the children feel like they’re in the bleachers of a boxing match between mom and dad, it can be very troubling.
Below are a few more points that can help make marriage the blessing it was intended to be. Some of these tips might sound like fortune cookie clichés, but they are true nonetheless.

First, one of the most crucial aspects of marriage is practicing forgiveness. Ben Franklin said, “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards.” We need to learn to apologize when we are wrong—and if we’re smart, we might find something to apologize for even when we know we are right.
As we have been forgiven by God, we should also forgive our spouses, even when they don’t deserve it. “Marriage,” someone said, “is three parts love and seven parts forgiveness.” That’s what biblical forgiveness is all about: forgiving the undeserving. If we don’t learn to forgive, marriage, if it survives, will be like purgatory.
But you might be asking, “How can I love and forgive a person when they have hurt me so deeply? After I have seen their dark and ugly side. How can I love them when they demonstrate so little love for me?” As you think about these questions, keep in mind these are the very questions Jesus can ask about each of us. Despite our selfishness and sin, He loves and forgives us. He gave His life to be one with us. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25 NKJV).
Second, just as the Bible teaches that we are sinners, we must accept the fact that we are married to someone who is physically, emotionally, and spiritually damaged by sin. Get over it. Your spouse has faults. Marriage is the art of two incompatible people learning to live compatibly. Pray your way through his or her faults. You might have to live with those faults, but you don’t have to obsess over them. If you do obsess over them, they will eventually eat you and your marriage alive. A perfect, holy God, through Christ, accepts us as we are; you, who are hardly holy and perfect, must do the same for your spouse. God then transforms us by love. If you would see change in your spouse, exemplify His life and love in your life (Ephesians 5:28).

Don’t always think of yourself first. As fallen humans, our default mode is “Me, Me, Me.” Like a compass that always points inward, our first impulse in any situation is to think of ourselves and of our own needs, survival, and comfort before anyone else’s—and that, unfortunately, includes our spouses. Try, through God’s grace and Spirit, to put your spouse before yourself just as Christ put us before Himself. Such an attitude can, and indeed will, do wonders for any marriage.
And just as Christ put Himself in our situation, for He “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin,” try to put yourself in your spouse’s shoes (Hebrews 4:15). In other words, when a tense situation arises, step back for a few moments and try to see things from your partner’s perspective. How does this situation impact him? Why would she feel as she does? It’s amazing how this understanding can alleviate a lot of stressful situations that will inevitably arise in a marriage.

Schedule quality personal time together. Time is the stuff of which love is made. Dry dishes together, pull weeds in the garden as a team, or anything else that will bring you together. Remember that immediately after God made marriage, He made the Sabbath—creating a time to build the relationship.

“When a man has taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war or be charged with any business; he shall be free at home one year, and bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken” (Deuteronomy 24:5 NKJV).

Every marriage has its own set of challenges, and no formula guarantees success. But through these simple principles, one can go a long way in helping make marriage better and better as the years go by.
One divorce is one too many. That was not how things were supposed to be. Marriage is sacred. If you understand that it is sacred, you will do everything you possibly can, in God’s grace, to protect it—making it a commitment for life.
So make up your mind now to say in the words of Ruth:

“Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me” (Ruth 1:16, 17).

Setting Dates for Christ’s Return

 

By Pastor Doug Batchelor

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.”
—Proverbs 13:12 (NKJV)

Few things cause more sadness than failed expectations. Over time, many believers have been discouraged by failed predictions of Jesus’ coming.
Jesus cautions in Matthew 24:11, “Many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.” It’s a straightforward warning that He repeats a little later in verse 24. He says, “If any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not” (v. 23).
The subject of this article is extremely important: dealing with the danger of setting or embracing particular dates for Jesus’ return. Christians need to be reminded periodically what the Bible plainly says about this perilous practice, even now, when it seems like His return could come at any moment.
When anyone starts predicting the day and hour of the second coming, in light of everything Jesus said about what we can know and what we can’t know, it’s reckless.
Still, we’ve all been exposed to these false predictions, and it’s not going to stop. Probably one of the most well-known episodes in recent times was when Harold Camping, president of Family Radio, predicted that Christ would return May 21, 2011. When that date passed, he said it would be October 21, 2011—and obviously, if you’re reading this article, we’re still here. His adherents were so convinced that judgment day would occur that many sold everything they had to announce this prediction all across America.
Sadly, Camping had already once predicted that Jesus would come in September 1994. His followers did not learn from his first mistake, but had they known their Bibles, they would have seen the Word is very clear on the matter of date setting. That’s why it’s so important for you and I to be clear about it too.

A Brief History of Date Setting
History is replete with those who have set a date or two for Christ to return—and then watched those dates come and go. There isn’t enough space here to cover all of the false prognostications, but it would be good to cover a few high points.
But first, let me clarify that some of these date setters were well meaning, so I’m not judging their love for the Lord. Some of them just misapplied Bible verses and overzealously proclaimed it on a grand scale ...

• William Miller, a well-intentioned and godly man, said the Lord was coming October 22, 1844. He took Bible prophecies that talked about the sanctuary and misapplied them to the second coming. I believe he had an accurate date but the wrong event.
• Hal Lindsey wrote the bestselling book The Late Great Planet Earth, in which he predicted Jesus would come in 1988. Thousands got excited, but none of it happened. Today, Lindsey still has a TV program where he explains prophecy.
• Edgar C. Whisenant sold 4.5 million copies of his book 88 Reasons Why the Lord Is Going to Come by 1988. Trinity Broadcasting Network interrupted their programming to tell people how to get ready for the rapture. The next day, their normal programming simply resumed.

Non-Christians Aren’t Immune
It’s not just Christians who are interested in apocalyptic date setting. Remember Y2K? And once again a troubled world is asking questions about the end. You’ve likely heard about the Mayan calendar, which some say declares the last day on December 21, 2012. However …

Authors disagree about what humankind should expect. … Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, says, “For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to mark the end of the whole cycle; to render December 21st, 2012 as a doomsday ... is a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in” (USA Today, 3/27/2007, emphasis added).

Did you catch that? It’s not only televangelists trying to “cash in” on date setting. It’s also people trying to sell books or tickets to a movie.
My wife Karen and I were in Belize recently and explored the Mayan ruins. At one point, I was sitting in a van with a driver who was Mayan and asked him about it. He just laughed and said, “It doesn’t mean anything.” So why do we get so excited about these things?

Do We Really Want to Know?
There’s a certain amount of insecurity we all feel about the future, knowing our lives are going to end. Perhaps some just want to know when their time is up so they can fit everything in on their bucket list before it’s too late.
Still, if you could know the day you were going to die, would you want to? What if I told you it was 100 years from now? Would you feel better about it? If it’s next week, would you want to know? Are you ready for it? For you, the jury might still be out.
What kind of attitude should you have about the second coming? Fortunately, the Bible tells us. Even in New Testament times, self-styled prophets were unsettling everybody by predicting dates for the end. Paul writes quite a bit about the second coming in 2 Thessalonians. He says, “Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord ... we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter” (2:1, 2 NKJV).
It’s interesting that he says not to be troubled. Everything else we read in the Bible offers a sense of urgency—“I am coming quickly”—yet Paul says here, “Wait a second! Don’t be shaken.” Even if you have a dream, hear it spoken by a famous evangelist, read it in a bestselling book, or even if a spirit appears saying it has the exact date calculated—don’t be troubled! Why? Because we don’t base our conclusions on dreams. It’s got to go along with what the Word of God says.

What Does God Want Us to Know?
Does the Lord want you to calculate the day of His coming? In Mathew 24, Jesus says, regarding the temple in Jerusalem, that not one stone was going to be left upon another. His disciples surely thought, “Wow! That must be the end of the world!” So they asked Jesus when these things would be. But see how Jesus answers them in verse 36: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”
In Acts 1:6, we read, “They asked Him, saying, ‘Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’ And He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.’” Notice that emphasis—the Father has it in His own authority.
Instead, Jesus takes them from their focus on when He’s coming back and places it elsewhere. “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me … to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8 NKJV). The reason Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit is not so we can untangle a mathematical secret and announce it in a book. No! He gives us the Holy Spirit so we can live godly lives and bring people to the cross.
“Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them [food] in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing” (Matthew 24:45, 46). Jesus wants us to be feeding others the Word of God. He doesn’t want us to be running off to some wilderness hideout, holing up like hermits waiting for the end. You might have met people like this. They want to calculate a date because they want to know when to start liquidating their assets, running to the hills, storing up their ammo and dry goods. They want to know that they are ready for the end. Who are they thinking about? Themselves. They’re not thinking about helping the lost get ready to meet Jesus.
Christians ought to be as motivated to share the gospel now as His disciples were then. Christ has not withdrawn His commission simply because He’s closer to coming back than yesterday. Why do we need a date to stir us up? After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, our church had our best attendance in years. We had people spilling out of the sanctuary. They thought, “Maybe it’s the end; I’d better get back to church.” But Luke 12:40 says, “Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.”

You Might Not Know What You Think You Know
As a prophecy teacher, I’ve often been asked if the ongoing economic crisis is a sign that Jesus is coming. My answer is, “Yes and no.” (I’m not trying to hedge my bets, mind you.) Yes in that it shows we can’t put our trust in money. But no in that Jesus doesn’t say that after great economic stress He’ll come. He actually suggests otherwise: “As it was also in the days of Lot: they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded” (Luke 17:28). In the days of Lot, the citizens were out being industrious and investing their gold the same day the end came.
In a sense, the prophecies of Scripture are better understood looking back. For instance, we know Jesus prophesied His death to the apostles. How many times did He tell them plainly that He was going to be betrayed, crucified, and would rise again? How much good did it do for the disciples? In Luke 24:6–8, after the faithful women arrived at the tomb, the angels said,

He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words.

Typically, the truth of the future can be kind of fantastical—it goes in one ear and out the other because it’s beyond our understanding. Jesus says in John 13:19, “Now I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he.” He’s saying He wants to reveal the future so that when those events happen, people will understand that Jesus is the point of all prophecy. Indeed, prophecy isn’t always about knowing exactly when this or that will happen.

What We Can Know Today
How can we be prepared if we don’t know the date? Jesus says,
When it is evening you say, “It will be fair weather, for the sky is red”; and in the morning, “It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.” … You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times (Matthew 16:2, 3 NKJV).
If you’re in the south and you see the barometric pressure dropping, you know it’s time to batten down the hatches. You might not know exactly when that storm will strike, but you do know to be prepared.
In the same way, when we look at the confluence of everything happening in our world, it’s significant. Wars and rumors of war are a daily headline. Political and religious tensions are growing. Monstrous natural disasters seem to strike every other month. Doesn’t it seem to you that if Christ doesn’t come soon, all flesh would die? But knowing this isn’t about a date or hour—it’s about something else altogether.

How You Can Be Ready Even When You Don’t Know
First Thessalonians 5:1–3 is an impressive warning for the people of God:

Concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape.

The Lord is not coming at a time when people are looking for a fire escape. Rather, Jesus is going to come at a time when His people are serving Him because of their love for Him. Luke 21:34 says, “Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly” (NKJV). If we get caught up in the cares of the world, we won’t be preparing our hearts to meet Jesus.
If we’re living lives of consistent surrender and obedience and looking for opportunities to share our faith, we won’t need to worry about the date on the calendar because we’ll be ready every day for the Lord’s coming!

A Spiritual Rush and Depression
One of the major problems with date setting is that it’s like getting your vigor from eating a giant candy bar; sure, you’ll feel a surge of energy, but there will be lethargy afterward. Setting a date gives people an artificial spiritual high. When the date passes, there is a corresponding depression that follows.
The fallout for these false alarms can be an attitude of increasing doubt about the Word of God—like the boy who cried, “Wolf!” Read 2 Peter 3:4 and ask yourself how motivated you would be to live for Christ if you were to stop believing He’s really coming.

His Promise Is Sure
Thousands of date setters have failed, but that doesn’t mean the Lord has forgotten about us. He’s coming back; we might not know the day and the hour, but we know He is coming and the time is near. We just need to be ready for it.
Remember, the Lord doesn’t want us to get ready because we know the date. He wants us to be ready because we know Him. If you’re motivated to get ready because you know a date, you have the wrong motive. How would you live if you thought Jesus was coming in a week? I ask you to live like that now for the rest of your life. Just be the way He wants you to be because you love Him and know He is coming someday soon.
Maybe you haven’t truly accepted Jesus as your Savior, trying to wait until the eleventh hour to get ready. Don’t tempt fate. Wouldn’t you like to know that you’re ready now? God is coming to rescue us from the sin-stained world—that’s a promise.
My prayer is that the Lord will deliver all His people from our inclination to calculate and fix the date on our calendars. Instead, let’s invite Him into our hearts now so we can be ready at any moment.

Best Series of Books

Conflict of the Ages Series

Read Your Bible Foremost 

In Order From Left to Right:

1.  Patriarchs and Prophets: Genesis to the end of king David's reign
2.  Prophets and Kings: King Solomon's reign to the last prophetic book of the old testament
3.  The Desire of Ages: Covering the life and ministry of Jesus
4.  The Acts of the Apostles: describing the 12 apostles and the early Christian church 
5.  The Great Controversy: About the church history viewed in terms of the conflict between Christ and Satan.